Review – Halloween (1978)

Happy Halloween, everybody! As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never seen the Halloween franchise – and given the fact that I’ve seen most of the other major classic horror films, I thought it prudent to give this one a try. I must also admit that this is the only franchise I’ve never truly cared to watch either. At its core, this is the birth of pointless slasher movies – but at the same time, it’s also incredibly beloved and watched year after year. Part of that is because of the holiday-based title, but is there more to it? In my opinion, not really. Let’s get into it.

Halloween is about Michael Myers, a man that many years ago, murdered his own sister as a child. Locked away for years, he finally escapes and wreaks havoc on a random set of teenage friends, but not before stalking them first. That’s it. That’s all this movie is about.

“Some men just want to watch the world burn, Master Wayne.” – Alfred, The Dark Knight.

Yes, some men just want to watch the world burn because there’s not much to them other than a truly evil soul. That’s the general idea and consensus behind Michael Myers. He doesn’t need a reason to kill because he is simply put…evil. Except, I felt like I needed a reason because it wasn’t giving us much of anything else as an alternative. There’s no motive, there’s barely any violence, when there is actual violence, there’s no gore or any real idea of where the victim was even struck. Even the acting is atrocious. As a member of an audience, I would have no idea of what’s even happening. I get it, they just want to give you an idea of what’s happening, which is fine most of the time…but if I don’t know what’s happening or where, I rarely care why.

The movie does do something right – it created a memorable looking villain. That may be because this movie is nearly 40 years old, but even so, it is what it is. It also had a good idea of how to present general creepiness based solely on the location of the camera – which helps when Michael Myers is stalking his victims. The music, I could have done without, but who cares. That being said, this is a movie that, in a way, changed the way horror films are presented. For that reason alone, I respect this movie, but I don’t like it – there’s too much about it that goes wrong in my opinion, and that comes down to the completely absent storytelling.

So here’s how it is…Halloween feels like a classic horror film. A part of that may solely be reputation and simplicity, but it feels how it should. That being said, its biggest weakness lies with storytelling. The reasoning behind Michael Myers doing what he does is as cheap as the movie…he’s evil – which means these victims are suffering from a random selection…they mean nothing…how can you care about their lives? There is barely any violence, which in and of itself is fine, but when there IS, it doesn’t show anything…so I’m left wondering how they died…apparently they were stabbed…which I guess doesn’t matter where. If you get stabbed anywhere on the body…you die. Apart from that, the acting is atrocious and it is downright weird towards the end – mainly the tombstone and ghost costume. Those are things you’d expect with a 8th or 9th installment running out of ideas…not the first movie ever.

So there it is. I wasn’t a fan, and I tried to list why. What is your opinion on this film?